In response to the lack of competition on roaming charges, the Commission's Information Society DG launched yesterday a website which intends to help consumers abroad to choose the most advantageous tariffs.
This is an innovative remedy, which comes on top of the other actions taken by the Commission (the initiation of procedures against Vodafone and T-Mobile in Germany , as well as Vodafone and O2 in the UK). This could be a dangerous remedy, though: increasing transparency in oligopolistic markets may certainly not be the best way to trigger price cutting initiatives...
Could you expand on why increasing transparency would not be good for competition in roaming? From what I understand about oligopolistic markets, they are markets where there are only a few major players and is not truly competitive due to the barriers to entry. Is this correct? Surely, allowing the consumer to choose the cheapest network, if done in an easy to understand manner, would force the mobile phone companies to reduce the wholesale charges they charge the roamers home network?
Thanks.
Posted by: Donal | October 10, 2005 at 02:38 PM
By making such a site available using public funds, the Commission is distorting the market for pricing comparison web sites, which is illegal under the own rules. I wonder who will sue just for the fun of it...
Laurent
Posted by: guerby | October 15, 2005 at 10:50 PM
You seem to have got the niche from the root, Awesome work
Posted by: passing drug test | November 06, 2009 at 12:17 PM